Moby-Dick Summary

Now admired as a
masterpiece of American literature and considered one of the greatest novels of
all time, Moby-Dick was published to unfavorable reviews, and its
author, Herman Melville, was subsequently unable to make a living as a writer.
He wrote just three more novels after Moby-Dick and then retired from
literary life, working as a customs officer, writing poems, a novella, and a
few short stories. Not until the 1920s were the multi-layered...

Encyclopedia Articles (1)

Moby Dick
by Herman Melville
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819. Because of his family's financial instability, Melville was forced to go to work at an early age. After a variety of ...
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Project Gutenberg eBooks (1)

CHAPTER 2
The Carpet-Bag
I stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked
it under my arm, and started for Cape Horn and the
Pacific. Quitting the good city of old Manhatto,
I duly arriv...
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Herman Melville Biographies (6)

Biography EssayHerman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing f...
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American author Herman Melville (1819-1891) is best known for his novel Moby-Dick. His work was a response, though often in a negative or ambivalent way, to the romantic movement that dominated Americ...
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"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see th...
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Herman Melville, who died almost forgotten although he had once been a popular author and had left behind ten notable books of prose fiction and four of verse, has gathered increasing fame, especially...
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"You must have plenty of sea-room to tell the truth in," wrote Herman Melville in Hawthorne the pseudonymous, two part review of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) that he publish...
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Herman Melville drew upon his adventurous travels on sea and land for the primary materials of his greatest fiction and poetry. Out of his experiences in the merchant service (1839), the whaling indus...
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Essays & Analysis (12)

Death in American Literature
Introduction
Scholars of American literature have pointed out that the theme of death has long pervaded American writings—from early colonial diaries through the ni...
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Death in American Literature
Introduction
Scholars of American literature have pointed out that the theme of death has long pervaded American writings—from early colonial diaries through the ni...
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Introduction
The prevalence of depictions of madness in nineteenth-century literature in England and America paralleled the growth of the scientific and medical study of insanity. Increasingly in the ...
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The Sea in Nineteenth-Century English and American Literature
Introduction
Throughout its development in both England and the United States, sea literature has traditionally involved three elements: t...
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They say revenge is best served cold. Or is it? What about wet and cold in recognition of Capitan Ahab? As vengeance seems to be his only purpose after loosing his leg. In Herman Melville's Moby Dick...
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Ahab is the main character Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville. Ahab, the captain of the Pequod and his crew are off on the high seas. He has a mission that he feels he was to complete. Ahab is a st...
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Moby-Dick has been treated so much as the idiosyncratic work of an individual genius that any way we can find to recover its larger cultural sources is bound to seem especially valuable. Nevert...
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"Scarcely had we proceeded two days on the sea, when about sunrise a great many whales and other monsters of the sea, appeared. Among the former, one was of a most monstrous size. This came towards ...
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The journey of The Pequod is one of adventure and destiny. Herman Melville describes this journey in the classic novel Moby Dick. Melville believes in using many physical objects as symbolizing bigg...
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Author: Jean Paul Nery
Ahab was a madman obsessed with his own personal revenge.
Was Ahab a madman obsessed with his own personal revenge, or was he a noble man against the evil universe? You will p...
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In Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick, Ahab struggle to capture the elusive white whale leads up to the moments when Ahab realizes that God is not flawless, his deep sense of isolation, and how good a...
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Surface: The Key to Understanding Moby-Dick
There are many key themes and words in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. One of the more interesting words found repeatedly is the word surface. There are ...
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